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In 2017 I had a chat with Gerald Madden a.k.a. Gernot Müller. Looking back, he wouldn't change a thing about his dj debut.
“Technically, my first gig ever was only in front of two people but with an audience of thousands listening. For my first time playing outside of my bedroom, I got invited to deejay at a college radio station called WMUC 88.1FM at the University of Maryland where I used to live at that time.”
Wild youth
“During my wild youth I had been around at many college house parties. At one those parties I met Peter, one of the radio deejays over there. He invited me to come and play at his radioshow called Cue Radio.”
Cue points
“I remember being super nervous. Not only did I prepared the whole set, I even had gone that far that I already had programmed all the cue points to mix in the new tracks. Besides that, the thing about radio is that you don’t only rock up and play your set. The tricky part is, that on top of mixing, you have the radio host asking you random questions. In a for me foreign language.”
Best friend
“Long story short: all went super well. I got invited over again at the radio show, became best friends with Peter, eventually started hosting my own radio show and started to get gigs outside of the radio studio.”
Escape Amsterdam
“Thinking back, I would do everything exactly the same. Starting to play at a radio station taught me a lot about music selection and different vibes of a variety of tracks. This experience was essential for me to get a residency at the Escape in Amsterdam where I opened the main room at Reveal for many years.”
From Gerald Madden to Join The Gang
“Last but not least, the Escape was the place where I met my studio partner Roberto with whom I started a new project called ‘Join the Gang’ a year ago, after getting a bit bored of playing and producing by myself all the time. When I started, I performed under the artist name Gerald Madden which is close to my really name Gernot Muller. After meeting Roberto, we decided that it wouldn’t make sense to use the same name since we teamed up together. We started making music together in a garage, which we considered to be ‘pretty ghetto’. Hence the name.”
“For this project we have decided to focus on producing. After we’ve defined our own sound, we want to play gigs again. Last year we produced a variety of music, from trap to techno and from future house to trance. Our first release was at Idenline Music. At this moment three tracks are waiting to be released within the next six months. They will help us to determine our style.”
